Name: Alex Cobb aka Etelin
Nationality: American
Occupation: Musician, writer, label founder at Students of Decay and Soda Gong
Current release: Etelin’s Patio User Manual is out now on Beacon Sound.
Recommendations: Joseph McElroy: Women and Men; Cynthia Scott: The Company of Strangers



When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?

Some pieces of music make me want to lean in, as if I might gain special insight into what’s going on with the instrumentation, harmonic structure, production techniques, etc. Others make me reflexively soften, feel excited or giddy, wistful or sad.

I think the only times I listen to music with my eyes closed are during insomnia or while traveling.

Entering/creating new worlds through music has always exerted a strong pull on me. What do you think you are drawn to most when it comes to listening to and creating music?

I’m equally motivated by exploration and the desire to articulate specific ideas and themes. As a writer, I’m very compelled by the relationship that exists between text and music to which it’s made to correspond.

With ambient/experimental music in particular, titles do so much work. A piece of untitled textural music can become something completely different when given a playful title vs. a somber one.

I’m quite drawn to the process of building a compelling narrative/thematic framework with text and then composing the music that it circumscribes and names.

According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?

It’s fascinating how absolutely accurate this is for me.

I was 13 or so when I began to discover experimental/avant-garde/improvisational music, back in the mid-90s. My path as a listener led me from rap and punk to labels like Rough Trade and SST, then on to stuff like Sonic Youth, krautrock, Japanese noise, AMM, Xenakis, Flying Nun, PSF, Xpressway, Blast First, VHF, Eremite, Drunken Fish, and on and on.

I still love a lot of this music, and I’d say these labels, among others, continue to shape some of my attitudes about publishing and archiving.

Tell me about one or two of your early pieces that you're still proud of (or satisfied with) – and why you're content with them.

My mind immediately goes to the Ribbons of Dust series that I self-released and Root Strata subsequently collected and published on CD.

From a technical perspective, it’s such humble and spare music, made with a broken Les Paul, a crappy interface plagued by latency issues, a couple Boss pedals, and a lot of reverb from whatever DAW I was using back then (maybe Cakewalk Sonar).

I’m not really able to listen to a lot of my older work as I have a tendency to hone in on gripes with certain aspects of it, but this trilogy of soft electric guitar vignettes is music for which I still retain some fondness.

What is your current studio or workspace like? What instruments, tools, equipment, and space do you need to make music?

I started working with modular synthesizers back in the late 2010s after becoming a bit bored of making processed guitar music. I currently have two small Eurorack systems and a compact 4u Serge system, as well as a small assortment of microphones and recorders.

I try to be “gear agnostic,” meaning I don’t fetishize equipment and wouldn’t be devastated to have to give any of it up. I value the idea of being scrappy as a musician, working with what you have, finding “your sound” with whatever is immediately at your disposal.

From the earliest sketches to the finished piece, tell me about the creative process for your current release, please.

Patio User Manual began as patching experiments with my Eurorack and Serge systems. I’d banked many gigabytes of raw recordings made at night after my kids had gone to sleep. The majority of this material turned out to be unusable junk – the detritus of learning different modules, circuits, and patching approaches.

One thing I’ve learned is that long takes will almost always yield gems if you are a diligent reviewer and a creative editor. I sorted and tagged the source material I wanted to work with, and once the narrative concept and titles came together, I got to work editing, arranging, and adding elements in the DAW.

What role and importance do rituals have for you, both as an artist and a listener?

I don’t think I have any rituals that are directly related to listening or my creative practice. I listen to music compulsively and all the time. I make music when I’m able to, usually crammed in between long stretches of parenting and working.

That said, I never miss a day of sitting zazen, and when I can structure my day to allow me to make music just after meditation, I definitely notice differences.

Late producer SOPHIE said: “You have the possibility [...] to generate any texture, and any sound. So why would any musician want to limit themselves?” What's your take on that?

I require limitations in order to make music. I find the DAW environment, VSTs, and programs like Kontakt to be totally overwhelming. All the tools I use seem to have constraints and drawbacks; they are as rudimentary as they are capable.

I love that there is maximalist, kitchen sink music being made that takes full advantage of the embarrassment of riches that we as electronic musicians have access to these days, but I have to keep things simple.

Do you feel that your music or your work as an artist needs to have a societal purpose or a responsibility to anyone but yourself?

This, or a closely related issue anyway, is something that I struggle with quite a bit. Despite believing strongly in the importance and value of art, I sometimes find it difficult to not see it as purely solipsistic given the state of the world.

I think this is exacerbated by the ever-growing scourge that is social media. I don’t engage with social platforms any more than I have to (as a publisher, it seems more or less compulsory if one wants to recuperate the cost of producing vinyl) because I have a difficult time handling the massive amount of self-promotion that’s placed alongside images of war atrocities, climate collapse, etc.

It’s a juxtaposition that I find jarring and hard to reconcile.

Once a piece is done and released, do you find it important that listeners understand it in a specific way? How do you deal with “misunderstandings?”

This isn’t important to me. I think I read too much Derrida to think it's reasonable for an artist to try to posit stable or privileged meaning to their work.

Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?

A couple years ago I invested in a pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 microphones and a Cinela blimp. I had a fair amount of experience making field recordings prior to acquiring this setup, but the first time I monitored a stereo ambience with it I was absolutely stunned.

High-quality microphones are something like binoculars for your ears. The amount of nuance and beauty in the environment I was listening to – an environment in which nothing “special” was going on, nothing one would pay attention to normally – was totally absorbing and very moving.

It’s easy to see why people decide to devote their lives to recording natural phenomena.

We can surround ourselves with sound every second of the day. The great pianist Glenn Gould even considered this the ultimate delight. How do you see that yourself and what importance does silence hold?

I find I have a hard time working without music, so during the work week I’m always listening to stuff – a lot of classical music, early music, and jazz. This is in contrast to evenings and weekends where I’m more choosy about what sounds I subject myself to.

I think silence is very important, but true silence is, of course, essentially a fiction. Living in a city, if I’m not listening to music I’m making or have chosen to put on the stereo, I’m probably listening to noises made by other humans. I find there are far too many engines in the world.

Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Making music is a skill like any other. The through line between being a musician,  ceramicist, pastry chef, translator, or gongfu tea master is putting in the time and work.

Of course, each of these disciplines have their own attendant requirements and distinctions, so they’re different in important ways. I don’t place music, literature, or visual art on any sort of pedestal; these sorts of expressions aren’t innately richer or more valuable than those of disciplines some might consider banal. 
 
What is a music related question that you would like to ask yourself – and what's your answer to it?

What is it about music that sustains your interest more than most things?

This strikes me as something very much worth understanding about myself. At present, however, I don’t know the answer.